Here writes a brave man ...
Atul Hatwal predicts here that Jeremy Corbyn will lose the election for leader of the Labour party.
It's an interesting and well argued piece: but here writes a brave man. He might be right, heaven only knows the polls were significantly out at the General Election and polling party members is notoriously difficult. They'd have to be much further out that in May for him to lose though.
If he's right his reputation will be greatly enhanced. If he's wrong people will be laughing at him for years in the same way they are still laughing at Sion Simon for his "We cannot be killed" article in the New Statesman in 2007 in which he predicted that
"Shortly there will be an election in which Labour will increase it's majority."
Mind you, Atul's article is merely brave, while Sion Simon's was mad - in fact, he admitted it was mad in the first sentence and would have been wiser to stop there. Indeed, the Sion Simon article actually looks even more hysterically funny in summer 2015 than it did in summer 2010, because it follows on the prediction that Labour would increase it's majority with this:
"This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government."
and
"The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready. "
It's an interesting and well argued piece: but here writes a brave man. He might be right, heaven only knows the polls were significantly out at the General Election and polling party members is notoriously difficult. They'd have to be much further out that in May for him to lose though.
If he's right his reputation will be greatly enhanced. If he's wrong people will be laughing at him for years in the same way they are still laughing at Sion Simon for his "We cannot be killed" article in the New Statesman in 2007 in which he predicted that
"Shortly there will be an election in which Labour will increase it's majority."
Mind you, Atul's article is merely brave, while Sion Simon's was mad - in fact, he admitted it was mad in the first sentence and would have been wiser to stop there. Indeed, the Sion Simon article actually looks even more hysterically funny in summer 2015 than it did in summer 2010, because it follows on the prediction that Labour would increase it's majority with this:
"This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government."
and
"The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready. "
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